Chiang Mai Doi Suthep Temple & Meo Hilltribe Village is set amongst the apexes of Doi Suthep. It has a lovely setting with a panoramic view of Chiangmai and the Mae Ping River valley. Albeit Wat Doi Suthep is the most recently built of the temples dating from the Lanna Thai period, it is the symbol of Chiangmai. The site was culled by sending an elephant to roam at will up the mountainside. When it reached this spot, it trumpeted, circled three times, and kneeled down and thus interpreted as a denotement betokening and auspicious site.
The Hmong (Meo) live in houses that sit right on the ground, not on stilts as do most on the other tribes. However, the main floor of their houses is not at ground level, but reposes upon a kind of above-ground basement or root cellar that they utilize for aliment storage. Moreover, their house-fronts slope outward and downward, an architectural feature that is the trademark of their villages. The Hmong , even more than the other tribes, practice a rigorous male-female division of labor. One custom that especially illustrates this is that of giving a newborn boy a gift of metal from which he will one they forge a weapon, whereas newborn girls receive no special gift.
The Hmong are a diligent, patient, and independent people, fond of wearing their silver ornaments during ceremonies and much devoted to the empyrean spirit they believe has engendered both the world and their own archaic way of life.
Doi Suthep Temple & Meo Hilltribe Village is the most comely and sacred temple containing a holy relic of the Lord Buddha, a panoramic view of the city can be optically discerned from here at 3,500 feet above sea level. Then visit Meo Hilltribe village at DOI PUI.